WRV Artists’ Project is a collective of artists who work together to support environmental activism through art-practice. We began as 9 artists, on the initiative of its curator Juliet Fowler Smith, to support the movement to protect the Williams River, and the locality’s unique heritage, community and productive agricultural land. After plans for the Tillegra Dam were abandoned in November 2010, we extended our attention to other areas of NSW threatened by environmental degradation.

Friday, November 27, 2015

On October 22 the SMH reported that Rio Tinto's plans to extend the life of its Mount Thorley Warkworth
open-cut coal mine has moved another step closer to final approval after
it gained approval from the Planning Assessment Commission's review
panel.

In its press release, Lock the Gate said the Rio Tinto Warkworth mine win robs Bulga of justice. The independent planning panel’s recommendation to approve Rio Tinto’s Mount Thorley Warkworth mine expansion proposal is a blow for the Bulga community, who have fought the proposal for five years and twice won in court, says Mr John Krey, President of the Bulga Milbrodale Progress Association.

Residents of the small Hunter Valley community of Bulga
have lost their battle against a controversial mine expansion, with the
project given final approval.The Mount Thorley Warkworth project
has been the subject of a long-running war between mining giant Rio
Tinto and the residents of Bulga.The Planning Assessment
Commission (PAC) today approved the mine's expansion which will see the
life of the mine extended by more than 20 years.The proposal will
involve the creation of an open cut super pit near the village of
Bulga, to extract hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Whitehaven
Coal held it's AGM in Sydney today, and this is what greeted the board
and shareholders as they arrived: a reminder that as Whitehaven's share
price continues to tumble, coal is a bad investment!

Whitehaven
and its controversial Maules Creek coal mine project has long been a
target of protest due to the severity of the mine's impacts on
Indigenous sacred sites, the Leard State Forest and its endangered flora
and fauna, the local farming community, and the climate.30 October 2015 text & images: Land Water Future

Monday, October 26, 2015

On the Battle for Bylong weekend of 24-5 October, as well as entertainment in the Bylong sports ground there were highly informative tours of the Bylong valley with Craig Shaw and Nell
Schofield who each spoke about about Kepco's plans to mine the Bylong Valley and thereby destroy a community and highly developed and unique agricultural area, as well as contribute to climate change.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Protest at Origin Energy AGM in Martin Place, Sydney, in memory of George Bender, the NSW farmer who took his own life after a long struggle to stop CSG companies mining his land. Image: land Water Future

Thursday, July 2, 2015

WRVAP attended the NSW Planning Assessment Commission hearing on 30 June and 1 July 2015 in the Hunter Valley town of Singleton to hear community response to Rio Tinto's proposed expansion of its open cut mine in the form of its Warkworth and Mt Thorley 'Continuation Projects'. The audience was packed, and included many who must have rushed straight there from work without having time to remove their orange high vis jackets, and which incidentally had the effect of showing that some locals are employed by the Rio Tinto mine.

PAC Hearing audience, Singleton 30 June 2015. Ph Kate Ausburn

There were nearly two days of 5-minute responses to the proposal to expand the Rio Tinto open cut mine. The PAC heard about the contribution this expansion will make to climate change through the burning of more coal, the impact on traditional owners' responsibility to care for the land, and other damage it will do to the surrounding land, including to rare and unique ecosystems and economic viability of farm businesses. WRVAP contributed two responses—by David Watson and Margaret Roberts.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

On May 25 WRVAP travelled with the NSW
community collective, Our Land Our Water Our Future, to Bulga to find out first hand the nature of the threat Rio Tinto is posing to the town and the land. We were given an invaluable tour of the town and area and the opportunity to meet and hear traditional custodians of the land including Wonnarua elder Uncle Kevin Taggart, as well as Bulga residents speak about the impact of the Rio Tinto mining and expansion.

Uncle Kevin Taggart, Wonnarua elder who spoke about the land being destroyed by the Rio Tinto mine in the background. Photo David Watson

As part of its campaign against an open-cut coalmine expansion, Our Land Our Water Our Future has funded and produced this video profiling
Uncle Kevin. He and other custodians and Bulga residents, have been
fighting for more than five years to stop the expansion by Rio Tinto.
They say it will create severe noise and dust pollution, destroy a
critically endangered woodland and threaten 110 registered Aboriginal
cultural sites. A final decision is expected within weeks.

Monday, April 13, 2015

The WRVAP Instruments of Democracy performance focuses on the metal lock-on equipment used as 'instruments of democracy' by many insightful and courageous people from all walks of life across NSW. Performed twice-daily during Cementa15, it is a 5 minute performance that bears witness to the non-violent direct action against open cut and coal seam gas mining that is spreading across NSW.

Friday, March 27, 2015

DOWNLOAD CATALOGUE PDFThe Williams River Valley Artists’ Project will present Instruments of Democracy in Cementa15 at the Kandos Scout Hall, open 10am to 4pm, 9–12 April 2015

At 10am and 2pm each day WRVAP’s project
is animated by Instruments of Democracy, a performance work
that takes on the role of witness to non-violent direct action. The
piece has been developed oversix months through workshopping our responses to
the courage, ingenuity, discipline and stamina of environmental activists—from
all walks of life—who oppose the terrible impacts of open-cut and long wall
coal mining, and CSG/fracking. Vast environmental destruction is wreaked by
large corporations that do not have the right to misuse, contaminate
and deplete our ground water, destroy forests and natural habitats, and fray
the social fabric of farming communities. When government fails, people
act: urgent concern about the future is driving a new form of
democracy. Instruments of Democracy is inspired by this development, especially by the the art-like actions using lock-on devices that we
witnessed in the Leard, Newcastle and Gloucester blockades. It was also prompted by a performance that also bears witness—An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale by
Alexandra Pirici & Manuel Pelmuș—that was seen by WRVAP artists in Venice in 2013.

Alongside the collaborative Instruments of Democracy performance, there are individual
artworks by WRVAP artists:

What we do

Our process is to familiarise ourselves with places under threat across New South Wales by being observer-supporters of activist campaigns underway to protect them. We use these as 'research residencies' for exhibitions and publishing that use the witnessing role of art to draw public and art-world attention to environmental debates and to the remarkable work of front-line activists. The events and campaigns that we have attended or in which we have participated in this way, are posted on this blog. After the community campaign against the Tillegra Dam was won by community activism in 2010, we moved on to the threat of coal and CSG mining, especially in the Bylong valley, the Leard State Forest and Bulga. This blog documents the exhibitions and publications that we have produced through this process.